6 Video Marketing Strategies You Can Steal

May 31, 2017

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Video Marketing

If you’ve stayed up-to-date on the latest digital marketing trends, you may have thought about incorporating video into your content marketing strategy. With its enormous potential to drive sales and connect with audiences, we can’t say we blame you.

But where do you begin? That’s the million-dollar question for many business marketers.

Before you throw every last cent of your marketing budget into a video marketing strategy, why not take a peek at how other brands are using video? If it works for them, there is a good chance that a similar strategy could work for you.

Ready to get inspired? Here are seven exceptional examples of how brands are using video to grow their business:

Address Problems and Provide Solutions

Customers don’t want just any product or service—they want a solution to their problems. To differentiate yourself from your competitors, you need to demonstrate how your product will solve their unique problem.

BarkBox, a company that sells a monthly subscription box of dog toys and treats, does this particularly well with one of their featured videos on Facebook.

BarkBox not only shows dogs loving every minute of their subscription, but also highlights common problems that dog owners face (i.e., toys that are destroyed too quickly, dogs with allergies) and how BarkBox can solve them by personalizing each box.

Seeing all those happy, wagging tails is convincing on its own, but this is a great example of how to use video to address customer pain points. You can easily adopt this strategy yourself and create a video that demonstrates how your products will make the customer’s life easier.

Use Video to Humanize Your Brand

Consumers are often reluctant to purchase from a faceless business. They want to buy from stores that they can connect with on a personal level. Big brands are particularly aware of this problem and many of them go to great lengths to humanize their brand.

The food industry has it the worst. Consumer distrust of food brands is at an all-time high, which is why brands such as Earthbound Farm rely on video to be transparent and ease consumer anxiety.

By using video to give a virtual tour of their facilities, Earthbound Farm manages to address many fears that people have about the food industry such as “where does my food come from?” or “is this business ethical and organic?”

In addition to the panoramic views of the farm, Earthbound Farm invites visitors to learn more. The company’s dedication to being transparent reduces consumer doubt, which helps clear the path to purchase.

Feature Video Testimonials

Customer testimonials are incredibly powerful. According to this infographic by Vendasta, 63 percent of customers are more likely to purchase from a site that features customer reviews.

Additional research shows that 88 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations—and this is simply for written user reviews! Think for a moment how persuasive it would be to hear a glowing recommendation from the customer’s own mouth.

It’s no surprise that many brands are capitalizing on this by placing video testimonials on their websites. A great example of this is Codecademy, a site that offers free coding classes.

Codecademy persuades people to sign up for classes using its “Life Stories” video series. These videos share the stories of people who have used Codecademy to launch their careers or begin new hobbies.

Want to use this tactic in your content marketing strategy? Start reaching out to customers who have left you positive reviews in the past and ask if they would be willing to be featured in your videos. If they love your products, chances are good that some of them would be more than happy to be featured on your site.

Incorporate Video into Your Web Design

Video has even made its way into our website backgrounds. This web design trend has been around since 2013, but it really started gaining momentum in 2016. Now, many online businesses have been taking advantage of video backgrounds to tell stories the moment a visitor lands on their homepage.

Take Evernote, for example. The digital note-taking, organizing, and archiving platform portrays three different scenarios of people using Evernote to “remember everything” when inspiration hits them.

For the creative thinker, these scenarios are instantly relatable. Evernote also keeps their form fields limited to encourage on-the-go notetakers to sign up for their app.

Connect With Fans Using Live Video

When Facebook launched its live video feature in April 2016, it didn’t take long for other social media sites to follow. Live streaming video became an instant hit with people who wanted to connect with others in real-time.

The rise of live streaming video didn’t escape the notice of marketers either. Many brands such as Schwood, an eyewear company, realized its potential to grow their brand and establish meaningful relationships with their fans.

Earlier this year, Schwood was interviewed by The Manual in a live video session. In the video (which you can view here), Schwood Eyewear founder Eric Singer gave fans a look at their showroom and factory in Portland.

Schwood even takes fans behind the scenes to see how the glasses are made. This real-time experience helps keep users engaged with their brand and curious to know more.

It’s understandable if you’re nervous about going live. After all, anything can happen in real-time! But that’s precisely why users love it. Don’t be afraid to peel back the curtain and show a new side of your online business to fans.

Explain Complex Ideas and Topics

If you sell a product or service that is somewhat complex, there is no question that you should be leveraging video to get your ideas across. Why? Because people spend more time on pages with video than those without and retain more information as a result.

Even if your product isn’t crazy complicated, you should be taking advantage of explainer videos. As an example, our own website features a video explaining how we leverage advanced content targeting to increase the number of people consuming your stories. Though the technology we use is “advanced”, the platform itself is easy to use.

Though your product may not be complex, your visitors may think so at first glance. A video explaining how it works can ease their concerns and show how easy your product is to use!

Conclusion

The examples listed above have been tested by companies and are proven to work with the right execution. But as with any marketing campaign, you need to have a way to measure your success.

Establish your key metrics for your video marketing campaigns and adjust your strategy as you go. Within no time, you can be leveraging videos to outperform the competition!